26,000 Chicago teachers walked off the job this week, leaving parents scrambling to cope with the 400,000 students that will be staying home and setting a dangerous precedent.
Steve Gunn of the Education Action Group Foundation (EAG) says Mayor Rahm Emmanuel (D) and the Board of Education are giving in to outrageous union demands, which sets a dangerous precedent for other large urban communities.
"The union got what it wanted as far as not having to put in anymore work to make up for the longer school day," Gunn reports. "They're going to get their huge raise. The school board already gained way on merit pay; they backed away from their demand for a merit-based system to reward outstanding teachers."
And the EAGnews.org editor-in-chief contends that the union's president, Karen Lewis, is making an absurd assumption about teacher evaluations.
"I saw Karen Lewis on a television news program this morning, essentially saying that poverty and the culture in many Chicago neighborhoods are the reason why these students can't learn and that teachers shouldn't be held accountable as long as poverty still exists," Gunn relays.
The city's 118 charter schools are not affected by the strike.